Growing up, we all heard the adage, “If you’ve got your health, then you’ve got all you need.” We learned that human life is more important than any material goods. But Oregon’s half-hearted efforts to provide health care to the working poor reveals those childhood beliefs to be myths.
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With over 47 million people uninsured in the United States, people suffering from treatable conditions are literally dying from lack of care. A 2002 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report estimated 18,000 people died in 2000 because they did not have medical insurance or the ability to pay for the cost of treatment and medicines.
Our society has the resources to provide hospitals, health care professionals and medicine to serve the needs of the people. But, like everything else in capitalist society, health care is a commodity to be sold for the primary purpose of making a profit.
Public health is hardly of concern to the CEOs and investment bankers who direct the giant hospital chains and medical supply, health insurance, and pharmaceutical corporations. These corporate owners make billions each year profiting from people’s health problems and the labor of health care workers.
In 2007, the top five hospital corporations made $10.5 billion in profits, while the top seven U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies reaped $44.9 billion. Given that nearly 20,000 people died due to lack of health care, the owners and managers of these corporate entities should be arrested for murder. The profits of these criminal enterprises should be seized and used to provide health care to the millions who are uninsured.
While that may sound like a radical idea, the concept of health care as a human right is resonating more and more amongst those who dispense health care daily—and who see first hand the tragedy of health care for profit.
A 2007 survey of U.S. physicians found that 59 percent favor a national health care system—a 10-point shift in physicians’ views since 2002. The co-author of the study, Dr. Ronald T. Ackermann of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research at Indiana University, stated, “Across the board, more physicians feel that our fragmented and for-profit insurance system is obstructing good patient care, and a majority now support national insurance as the remedy.”
Not surprisingly, amongst physicians who have daily contact with the most vulnerable populations—psychiatrists, emergency medicine doctors and pediatric sub-specialists—the percentage in favor were higher: 83, 69 and 65 percent respectively. Even among surgeons—traditionally the most elite health care professionals and the most removed from patient interaction—55 percent were in favor, twice as many as in 2002.
This shift in opinion amongst physicians, who traditionally view themselves as individual professionals with little in common with the people they serve, signals the potential for unity in the struggle for health care for all.
A national health care system can be fought for and won within the confines of U.S. capitalist society. However, it will take a socialist revolution to guarantee the greatest quality of care and quality of life for all working and poor people. Only when the disease of capitalism is eradicated will the human patient be free of the Earth’s deadliest ailment.
